Week 1 – Day 1 (New Beginning/New Toy)

About a month ago my dad (biological dad in case anyone was confused after this post) asked me what I wanted for my birthday. He usually sends me money – I’ve told him he really doesn’t need to but he says he wants to, so sheesh, he doesn’t have to twist my arm – but he said it would be nice to actually buy me something specific.

I told him that I’ve been thinking about getting a personal gps device. I'd been thinking that it could help motivate me to get back out there. He was all over that idea and had it picked out and ordered before we even got off the phone. Thanks dad :)

It took me 2.5 months to get the motivation back to start again. Yesterday I was feeling so crappy and restless it was easier than usual to make myself get out there. I felt like I needed to run. My body is apparently telling me “c’mon and exercise dumb-ass!”

I want to start slow again so I’m back to the week 1 instruction: Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

Instead of repeating each week twice, I’m hoping I’ll be able to only do each week once until at least week 4.

Week 1, day 1 was much easier this time around. That’s good – it seems my nine weeks this spring actually made some lasting difference to my body. My lungs still burned but I could have run longer than the 60 seconds. I didn't though. I don’t want to push myself too hard until I get into a good pattern of going out regularly. There was some slight pain in my ankle at the end but not much else. No knee pain at all. Although, the uh… more floppy parts of my body (sorry if that’s tmi haha) were kind of numb by the end. (The weird thigh pain I'd been having totally went away a few weeks after I quit running.)

My gps was very handy. I’m still learning how to use it but it worked much better than my stopwatch and I didn’t have to count laps around the circle to calculate how far I went. I'm excited about this because now I'll be able to just take off from my house and go where ever I want. I won't be stuck running the circle just to be able to measure my distance.

Totals were 1.92 miles in 31 minutes (which includes the 5 min warm up and some extra walking after time was up). For later reference, in just the 20 mins of jogging/walking I went 1.3 miles.

Oh and can I just say… Ahhhhh stretching! Still lovin that part.

Day 2 is tomorrow (well actually later today – I’m up really late once again) and C said she’d come over and go with me. :)